Awareness Session held in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry by OCAI

Oversight Commission on Access to Information (OCAI) held an awareness session on Access to Information Law for the officials of Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) on May 2, 2017.

In the beginning of the session, Mr Mohammad Qurban Haqjo, Deputy Minister for Commerce made his remarks on the importance of information and said: the more culture of access to information is spread out, the more it brings transparency and accountability within public bodies. Indeed, access to information a basic right of Afghan citizens through which they could monitor on the three branches of the government: Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers and fortunately such right has been backed and protected by the law.

Then, Mr. Shookur Dadras, OCAI’s member pointed out on unawareness of the public from the law and added: most state institutions still are not well aware of the Access to Information Law and therefore, OCAI is committed to holding public awareness session within these institutions to raise awareness. He further implied on significance of information and emphasized that Access to Information Law strengthens the elite and top management level, and it will also result in transparency within public bodies.

Ata Mohammad Yari, another member of OCAI, talked on the issue and asserted that: all activities somehow relate to the following four which are finance, human, technical and data resources from which data comes on top and thus the state institutions need to classify their data to easily and promptly provide the public with information upon their request.

At the end, Mr. Misbah OCAI’s public outreach specialist and Mr. Afghani, OCAI’s capacity building specialist delivered a comprehensive presentation covering the entire articles of ATI law and answered to the questions raised by the attendees.